Robert Carlyle Quotes

With theatre, you have to be ready for anything.

I'm good with a script.

I'm not one of those actresses that asks what's going to happen. I've never been. I just take the scripts, and I see what's given to me, and I go with it that way.

I grew up in the theater, and you can't improvise Shakespeare and Ibsen. You have to speak the language. But obviously, in a contemporary film, there's often room for improvisation and spontaneous things that happen. As long as I know what I'm trying to achieve in the scene, and when something comes up, I know that the response is genuine, I'm comfortable. That's really how I build everything.

You learn your lines as well as you can and you go in there and go with whatever is thrown at you. Sometimes you don't know whether or not they're going to break the scene up, so you don't have to do it all at one time.

When they came to you for your line, you had to be ready and you had to get it in one.

I don't worry too much about the script, I just ad lib, like Pearl Bailey.

Most actors spend a lot of time training themselves to be an actor. And I kind of didn't do that. I just started doin' it in front of an audience and had to deliver.

Sometimes you don't want to get married too much to a lot of rehearsing, I feel, when it comes to film, because there's so many technicalities. So if I'm in my head, I've gotten settled on something, I'm gonna have to change it if I get there and something was set that's completely different.

I don't feel that I have to control every aspect of things that I appear in. You learn a lot performing someone else's writing.

I love to be in the position of not knowing what I'm gonna do, but having rehearsed all of those so when something happens with the others actors I go with whatever that is I'm getting.

I've been on projects before where there's no rehearsal, and you walk in on set and that's literally the first time you've ever played the character, and then I've had times where there's been three weeks of rehearsal. I like both.

I'm not used to a script.

To me, one of the things I love about being an actor is that it's never done; it's never perfect, and so it's the process. It's like practicing being okay with things not being perfect and things being outside of your control.

I research every part thoroughly. I talk it out with my actor friends, but then I throw it all away when I get to the set. You have to be spontaneous.

I worked with Marlon Wayans on the show 'They Wayans Brothers,' and we hit it off. One thing about Marlon, when he casts a movie or a TV show, he expects you to bring it. You've got to be ready to improv, because Marlon will say anything, and you've got to be ready to come back.

TV is wild. You just play the role you're given, and you show up and do the best that you can.

The day before I work, I don't like to even look at the script and let whatever happens happen on the set. But I do prepare a lot. I'm a big believer in that.

For me, you have to do as much work as you can beforehand and, once you get on stage or set, throw it out the window because you need to be collaborative. You shouldn't have too many ideas about where it goes before you get into the room with the director and other actors.

As an actor, I go with the flow.

When someone offers me a part, I say, 'Yes, please.'

Even when I was in school shows, in elementary school doing plays, I'd always go off book and start improvising.

I've done a lot of theater, and I know that it's a different audience each time who doesn't know the story, and we have to tell it.

I don't like improvising on camera, particularly, but very often, a scene will not be working, and you rehearse it once or twice, and you realize something's missing. So I'll play with it until it makes sense.

Well, I love acting, and I love acting quick.